A Baker’s Dozen Techniques to Find Top Talent on LinkedIn

If you’re looking to hire a top caliber employee at a professional level, LinkedIn is without question one of the most powerful tools at your disposal.

Here are my Top Baker’s Dozen techniques to quickly and easily find outstanding talent. Keep in mind, finding the person is the easy part – convincing them to talk with you is the hard part (hence the rationale behind using an executive search firm like IMPACT Hiring Solutions).

1. Complete your profile from a marketing perspective – otherwise know in certain farming circles as “putting some lipstick on the pig”
2. Build up your network with people at competitors, vendors, suppliers, customers within your industry, function, geography, and markets.
3. Conduct very precise searches, broadening the search criteria in expanding rings.
4. When you identify a specific candidate, search for their email address using Jigsaw or ZoomInfo. LinkedIn doesn’t give you enough Inmails to be effective. Having the email address is a good approach for direct contact.
5. Join the groups your target candidate is most likely to have joined.
6. Review the SlideShare Presentations of anyone who might know the person you want to hire
7. Review the potential blogs by those in your network – linked to their LinkedIn Profiles
8. Review the Twitter Stream of Candidates for whom you are searching. You’ll see their connections by whom they are twittering with on a regular basis.
9. Examine the recommendations people have made – many times these recommenders might be good candidates and they have strong networks
10. Who is your potential candidates recommending – these might be good candidates and once again, they also have strong networks.
11. Look at the network connections of the individuals with whom you have a first degree connection. They might know of the ideal candidate.
12. Search the Questions and Answers area on LinkedIn. Sometimes, the best candidates are freely sharing their advice and recommendations – and posting questions of their own
13. Click on the company name and look at other people from the same company as your target candidates. Are you connected to any of these people?

These Baker’s Dozen Techniques should keep you busy on your search for top talent. The upside is that outstanding future employees can be identified through these techniques. The Downside – it’s time-consuming. Going after passive candidates through social networking by using sites like LinkedIn or Facebook can take 80-120 hours of work for a mid-level management position – the searching, networking, asking for referrals, contacting candidates, follow-up, and phone interviewing.

In future posts, we’ll tackle each technique in more depth.

Are you using any of these techniques? What’s worked and what has not worked? Are you using any other tools of LinkedIn that I’ve not mentioned?

Barry

photo credit by Rachel From Cupcakes Take the Cake

Hiring Frustration #2: Not Enough Candidates

Most of the methods companies use to attract candidates bring those who are floating near the surface aggressively looking for a new job.

Traditional methods of sourcing bring average and mediocre candiates to your doorstep. The traditional methods also repel top talent.

If you desire to start attracting top talent you’ve got to fish deeply in the proper ponds.

Step 1 is changing the approach of advertising from  the job description advertisement approach to a Compelling Marketing Statement. Once this document is ready, you can then leverage it by making sure the 2 primary groups of top talent become aware of your opportunity through our Success Sourcing Strategies. Download the FREE Samples of Compelling Marketing Statements from our web site.

We’re also offering a FREE Sourcing Review for your company to determine if your current process and system is capable of hiring top talent at every level on a consistent basis. Read more about this unique FREE Sourcing Review.

Barry

Leveraging Social Networks

On our radio show heard Monday’s from 11 – noon PDT on LATalkRadio Barry and I discuss how to use social media to find customers, locate the best candidates and how to meet the people you need to meet so you can meet the person you want to meet. Social media such as Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook are becoming the new way to expand your network.

These are powerful tools that many companies are just beginning to understand their true value. Barry and I will help you unlock the mystery. We will show you how to start out and give some references to help you incorporate these into your marketing toolbox.

Leveraging Social Media Just click the link to listen.

Upgrading with Social Networking

Now is an excellent time to consider upgrading your team. Just a year ago one of the biggest issues facing companies was “finding qualified people.” Today that has changed for a lot of companies or industries. Taking a contrarian approach maybe the best strategy. Sooner or later the economy will turn and then many companies will be right back trying to find top talent. Most will find that talent already at their competitors.

Consider doing what recruiters do – build an inventory of people you want to keep in touch with. This is where social networking comes into play. You can use Linkedin to connect, or Twitter to keep in touch. The key is keeping in-touch. Communicating with these potential future employees will only help bond them to you.

Use these tools to find key people that you know when the economy turns you will want to bring on board. Once you locate them begin to build a relationship with them. Ask to meet for coffee, invite to conferences, look them up at a trade show and don’t forget to send the an invitation on Linkedin. Then when you are ready to seriously consider filling the role you know where they are and you are the first person to approach them. Many will be underemployed and just waiting out the economy.

The worst thing most employers can do now is think so short term that all the top talent ends up working for the competition.